Vast Variety

News sources are reporting this morning that Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd (D) has decided to not run for reelection. Dodd’s poll numbers have been dropping really fast due to his connection to a banking scandal involving Countrywide, for moving his family to Iowa when he made his 2008 Presidential bid, and his seeming involvement in legislation that allowed taxpayer bailed out AIG to pay out millions of dollars in highly undeserved bonuses. Republicans are going to tout this as a victory and proof that America doesn’t want the Democratic health care reform bill to pass, even though they would be wrong. While it’s true that Dodd has taken some heat over health care reform, they would be forgetting that health care reform is very popular in Connecticut.

Dodd’s retirement will probably actually improve the chances of the Democrats holding on to his seat this November as this move opens the way for the highly popular Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

While I don’t think this means much for the health care bill that is currently going through reconciliation between the House and Senate versions, it could mean delays in the financial regulation reforms that the country needs in order to prevent banks from getting to be “too big to fail.”

Well, here is some news that is bound to make the Climategaters and Climate change deniers go into yet another frenzy. According to a New York Times article that appeared on MSNBC, the CIA has been working with climate scientists, providing information from spy satellites and other sources. Apparently this cooperation predates the Bush administration (who shut it down), and allows scientists to analyze otherwise classified images of things like sea ice and deforestation in remote areas of the world were manpower is limited.

Critics, like Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) seem to feel that the CIA is wasting resources on programs such as this, and remarked that the intelligence agency should

not spying on sea lions.

Unfortunately the news of this program is only now spreading out to the general public in the shadow of the Underwear Bomber and that means that the right will most likely try to politicize it without really looking at the details of what the program provides to scientists who are trying to understand the complexities of the planet’s climate and how those details are obtained and managed.

January 3rd

1431 – Joan of Arc is handed over to the Bishop Pierre Cauchon.

1777 – American general George Washington defeats British general Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Princeton.

1870 – The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins.

1947 – Proceedings of the U.S. Congress are televised for the first time.

1959 – Alaska is admitted as the 49th U.S. State.

1993 – In Moscow, George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin sign the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Monday the 4th of January and that means that I am headed back to work today after the holiday shutdown at the plant. While the holidays have been fairly busy for me as I’ve been moving (more on that in a bit) they have been rather boring and even though I hate to say it, I’m almost glad to be back to work. Don’t anyone tell my boss that I said that.

Like most of the country it’s bitterly cold here in Iowa right now. My car acted really reluctant to start. I’ve also got a front tire that doesn’t seem to want to hold air. Going to have to get that looked at.

As I’ve said I’ve been in the process of moving. Well sort of. The person that was renting the main floor of my house has moved out so I’ve decided to take the opportunity and move out of the upstairs apartment I’ve been in since I first moved into the house 4 or 5 years ago. I’ve been filling nail holes, doing a little painting, along with moving stuff. I should be done by the end of the week.

Welcome to 2010 everyone. Have a happy new year.

This graphic from the New York Times is floating around the net today. Some times there simply are no words.

2009 Review like only the folks at Jib Jab can do.

As you can see I’ve installed a new theme to the blog. I still need to tweak some of the images but overall I’m pretty happy with the new look.

Ok, for all you friends and family out there that may on the off chance be interested in buying me a Christmas gift this year, well don’t.

Just kidding.

If you need some ideas however I’ve made it easy for you, in t he side bar of this blog is my Amazon Wish List. Feel free to use that as a guide to ideas. Also, if you buy something from the list for me I will also get a cut of the proceeds thanks to my Amazon Associates membership, which goes for any Amazon.com link you see from this blog.

Tuesday night and Wednesday brought to Iowa and much of the Midwest it’s first major winter storm of the season. Over the last few years these storms have been relatively mild with just a few inches of snow. However, yesterday’s storm was probably the worst storm I have seen in Iowa in about 10 years or so.

WHO has a great slide show set up of pictures that have been sent in by viewers around the state of the Blizzard of 2009.

I think this guy is gonna need a bigger snow blower.

While the right continues to have fits over one conspiracy theory after another, they really need to stop watching “24”, the latest one regarding to the release of 1000’s of emails that were stolen from a server at the East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, has been dubbed, Climategate. I wonder how many decades will have to pass before we stop comparing every real and fake conspiracy theory after Watergate.

The right seems to think that there is some huge cover up within the scientific community that is making up the whole theory that human’s are in fact dramatically and fatally, changing the climate of Earth. The just can’t seem to get enough of it and have been looking to take out of context any and every little blurb they can from the hacked and stolen emails.

Here are some of the stories that have been floating around. Telegraph (UK), RealClearPolitics, Fox “News”, Michelle Malkin, Hot Air

So all these righties, are just full of themselves, thinking that they have found evidence that man induced climate change is nothing more than the largest hoax ever pulled. They are completely wrong. Climate change is real and it is the hand of man that is causing it.

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change has just released a paper that debunks the claims that the emails show some sort of conspiracy.

Although a small percentage of the emails are impolite and some express animosity toward opponents, when placed into proper context they do not appear to reveal fraud or other scientific misconduct by Dr. Jones or his correspondents. The most common accusations of misconduct center around two general themes:

The debunking is thoroughly detailed and I highly recommend reading the whole report.

Here are a couple of excerpts.

In an email dated Nov. 12, 1999, Prof. Phil Jones stated that he had used a “trick” to “hide the decline.” The email does not say what decline he was talking about, so it has been widely misreported that he was hiding a decline in temperatures. Those reports are not correct, nor is it accurate to say that he was actually hiding data, even though he chose the word. The word “trick” was used as it is in common parlance to mean a clever solution to a problem (e.g., “I know a trick to get that stain off your shirt.”). The decline he said he was hiding referred to one series of high‐latitude tree ring data from 1960 to 1994 that did not follow measured temperatures at the same locations, even though they had followed measured temperatures for about a century before 1960.

In several emails the authors complain about certain scientific papers and refer to them as “garbage” or other derogatory descriptions. All scientists complain about papers they judge to be inferior and it is commonplace for individual scientists to insult the work of others in private conversation. While disrespectful, this behavior is not suppression, it is not unethical,
and it is by no means limited to papers authored by skeptics of human‐induced climate change.

Of course, the right will ignore this debunking, since it comes from a center that works on climate change research, and would obviously be in on the conspiracy.

The italicized text denotes a heavy dose of sarcasm.

Recently the New York State senate voted down a marriage equality bill that would have legalized same-sex marriages performed in that state. One of the state Senators who voted against that bill was Sen. Hiram Monserrate.

Monserrate currently has a court order against him preventing him from seeing the woman he attacked and injured with broken glass. The girlfriend recanted her story and the senator was able to avoid felony charges although he received 3 months probation and 250 hours of community service. He had this to say when he was trying to fight against the court order.

Two adults who are consenting and who are like-minded and within their mental capacities should be allowed to be with each other. I think it’s an outrage.

All I can say senator… Welcome to our world.

H/T: Joe.My.God